Majdanek was a German Nazi concentration camp on the outskirts of Lublin, Poland, established during the German Nazi occupation of Poland. Although initially established for forced labor and not for extermination, the camp was used to kill people during Operation Reinhard: the German Nazi plan to murder all Jews within the General Government in Poland. More than 79,000 people were killed at Majdanek (59,000 of them Polish Jews) during the 34 months of its operation. The camp, which operated from October 1, 1941 until July 22, 1944, was captured nearly intact, because the advance of the Soviet Red Army was so rapid it prevented the Nazis from destroying most of its infrastructure before liberation. Majdanek remains the best preserved Nazi concentration camp of the Holocaust.

The picture shows Zbigniew Religa, famous Polish cardiac surgeon. In 1985 he performed first heart transplantation in Poland, learning from foreigner books(!).

In 1987 James Stanfield’s photo of Zbigniew Religa was proclaimed a photo of the year in National Geographic.

Zbigniew Religa keep watch on a monitor tracking the vital signs of a heart transplant patient. An exhausted college who helped Zbigniew Religa perform two transplants in one all night session sleeps in the corner.